A History of Sin
by Mariagoner
Summary: Do you ever wonder, she will ask him thrice, why it is that the people you love don't stay? Lopsided VosslerAshe, Basch, Rassler.


For the almost unbearably wonderful and intelligent **Cygnahime**, both because she's been an amazing help with **Knots, Ties and Tides** and because she is officially a _graduate_ now and as such, deserves the best presents we can all shower her with. You asked for Vossler, Basch and liberal use of the irony cudgel and by god, I hope this qualifies. And this will be my last post for a while so I do hope you enjoy!

And comments, corrections and criticism are, as always, completely welcome and loved! After all, a little encouragement never fails to add a bit of inspiration...

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**Title: A History of Sin**

**Fandom: Final Fantasy XII**

**Characters/Pairings: Lopsided Vossler/Ashe, Basch, Rassler**

**Rating: PG-13**

**Summary: Do you ever wonder, she will ask him thrice, why it is that the people you love don't stay?**

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Do you ever wonder, she will ask him thrice, why it is that the people you love don't stay?

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She is fourteen years old the first time she asks him this question.

It is the eve of her brother's funereal and all of Dalmasca is draped in mourning dress. With the crown prince's death, she is the future of her country and the last hope they have and he is a guardian that takes care to never touch her any more than he must, than he absolutely has to by the dictates of the land. She is fourteen and she is strong and she is fair and when she can, she commands him to teach her of how to use blades if ever she shall need them. She is fourteen and he knows that she admires him and he fears her admiration and what it stirs within himself. And the eve that they lay the last of her brothers to rest, she steals away to his room with wet eyes and tear-slicked lips and he can't turn away or answer her truly or stop loathing himself for what he wishes.

Do you ever wonder, she asks him, and there is a sadness in her eyes he would give anything to chase away. Do you ever wonder, why it is that the people you love don't stay?

He cannot touch her even then, even at the moment when she is most vulnerable, most desperate. Another man might have found it easy to have used her sadness, to have cracked open the seed of her vulnerability, to have taken her in his arms and told her everything that would have reassured her and bound her to him, regardless of what was truly best.

But he can't. He simply refuses. And even as he murmurs the usual platitudes about fate and chance and chance and fate and all the bastards that come in between their intersection, his hand hovers over her shoulder for a minute, bare fingertips not quite touching her equally bare skin. She is so young and she is so close and her eyes could have met his if-- if--

She turns herself away from him with a heavy step. I understand, she says. I'm sorry to have intruded on your time in such a way. Forgive me for taking a liberty such as this.

* * *

Do you ever wonder why it is that the people you love don't stay?

It haunts him, this sentence, this slippery thrall of a question, this inquiry that rings around him and shudders through his closed eyelids and works itself through her barely parted lips in near every dream he has. And he lies away at night sometimes and wonders how best to console her, to court her with-- not his life, not his hand, he has nothing to give her there-- but something of his own soul, something to let her understand.

But in the end, all of his imaginings are as meaningless as gibberish and the days thereafter see her fledgling feelings of him flicker and die away. She turns, first, to another with a sad smile and sun-drawn hair-- a foreigner, a foreigner not even of their most beloved country, and she opens her heart to him yet. And later on, dutiful to the needs of Dalmasca, she lets in a boy more foreign still, with an even sadder smile and even paler hair. And Vossler is left to wonder what it is that he has done, what it is about them that couldn't be changed. And he wonders as she grows and grows and grows finally away--

Whatever she once feels from him fades, as ought to be the case. He only wishes that what's trapped in his heart could do the same.

* * *

In his dreams, she is fourteen again and always looking up at him through long, pale lashes. She is fourteen again and their hands are entwined as once they had been and his mouth can rest gently against her forehead as he has always meant it to and still the sweetness of what he desires can't obliterate the reality of what she would truly say.

Even within himself, he can't escape.

Do you ever wonder, she will say in his mindscape. Do you ever wonder why it is that _I_ didn't want to stay?

* * *

Years later, when all the world is falling around them, she is a widow with a veil about her pale hair and an invisible noose corded around her neck. And when she is one foot and one mile and one thousand steps beyond his reach, with her husband's last kiss pressed against her lips and his wedding ring clenched in her fist, she will ask again this question.

Vossler, she will say, and he knows the echoes of other names, more beloved names, right behind his. Vossler, do you ever wonder why it is that the people you love don't stay? We stay, you and I, we have always stayed, we will always stay. But why is it that these others, those that I have loved, my father, my mother, my husband, my brothers-- why is it that they couldn't have survived? Why is it that they-- he-- _they_-- ended up leaving us no matter how hard we try to keep them?

_(And in her eyes he can see the glimpse of her groom, white and shining and already condemned, as he had stridden away.)_

Is it something in us, she asks, that makes them fling them from ourselves? Is it something in us that leads them to their death?

He knows she means to ask, more than anything, if she had done something wrong without even knowing it.

And he will say no and whisper empty assurances and tell him of her father, his hopes, his wishes, what might come in the future, what plans he will ravel and unravel again and again for her sake…

And she will not listen, though she means to listen, and other words will swallow up her fears instead.

* * *

Do you ever wonder why it is that the people you love don't stay?

She says it one last time after the news of Basch comes and they fully know why he is taken away. She has her back to him, this time, and before he can even begin to answer, to try and answer, she interrupts her own question.

I'm sorry, she murmurs, and the darkness and the filth of the places he has to hide her in are nowhere near as bleak as that sentence. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-- to waste your time with such meaningless questions. I don't know what compelled me to even ask since you never-- _I _never--

She trails away and her voice is cool when she finds it again. Forgive me, she states. General, it doesn't really matter anyway.

He could have told her, if she truly wanted an answer, that it wasn't due to a lack of love. How could anyone in the world stand to look at her and not love her? How could anyone want to betray her once they had ever known of her steel and her strength, her face and her fealty?

How could anyone stand to leave her once they had found themselves within her midst?

No, it wasn't her, it couldn't ever be her, she was perfect, she was shining, she was endless, she was blameless, she had hands that needn't ever be stained, not when he was there to take her place...

He could have told her-- if she had asked just one more time, he could have said--

But then, perhaps she never really wanted his words anyway.


End file.
